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About this blog: I am a native of Alameda County, grew up in Pleasanton and currently live in the house I grew up in that is more than 100 years old. I spent 39 years in the daily newspaper business and wrote a column for more than 25 years in add... (More)

About this blog: I am a native of Alameda County, grew up in Pleasanton and currently live in the house I grew up in that is more than 100 years old. I spent 39 years in the daily newspaper business and wrote a column for more than 25 years in addition to writing editorials for more than 15 years. I have served as a director of many non-profits in the Valley and the broader Bay Area and currently serve as chair of Teen Esteem and on the advisory board of Shepherd?s Gate. I also served as founding chair of Heart for Africa and have travelled to Africa seven times to serve on mission trips. My wife, Betty Gail, has taught at Amador Valley High (from where we both graduated) since 1981. She and I both graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, as did both of my parents and my three siblings. Given that Cal tradition, our daughter went south to the University of Southern California and graduated with a degree in international relations. Since graduation, she has taken three mission trips and will be serving in the Philippines for nine months starting in September. (Hide)

A novel rationale to vote for Trump

Uploaded: Nov 3, 2016

Thomas Sowell offered an unusual reason of why to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton.
Trump will be easier to impeach, Sowell wrote in his opinion piece in the East Bay Times on Halloween (timing was coincidence—the paper routinely runs his column on Mondays). Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and offers some piercing insights into our world. He’s African American and grew up in the slums in New York City.
The headline writer grabbed that sentence from well down in his column. Sowell’s key message was simple—the down-ballot races count, particularly those for Congress. Why? Because the country desperately needs a congress that “can keep either of these dangerous people from doing permanent damage,” Sowell wrote. For the past few years, I have been receiving email newsletter from Pastor Bill Owens of Henderson, NV. He is the founder of the Coalition of African American Pastors also known as The Coalition for American Action and Principals. When he was young, Owens marched with Dr. Martin Luther King as blacks fought for civil rights.
He and his organization have been very critical about the president’s embrace of the LGBT agenda at the cost of American values such as marriage being between one man and one woman. He has been outspoken about how the Democratic party and its reliance on African American votes. This week, he formally will endorse Donald Trump.
He wrote recently,” For approximately half a century, African Americans have supported the Democratic Party.
Now, I am doing everything I can to call on blacks (and all people of faith) to abandon that party and reclaim their voice ... and their political power.
Why? Because isn't fifty years of failure enough?
Democratic policies have destroyed the African American community. They have robbed us of our dignity and entrepreneurship. Entitlement programs have created a culture of dependency and encouraged single-parent homes, thereby destroying our families. Abortion disproportionately affects black children, acting as an effective genocide on our people. And our values are being further eroded by the Democratic embrace of the LGBT agenda--especially same-sex marriage and transgender rights.

And yet, African Americans still loyally voted for Democrats. Who thanked us for our votes and then went on to completely ignore us--when they weren't undermining our principles or insulting us by equating gay marriage with the civil rights marches of the 1960s.”

Thankfully, these two voices play an insignificant role in the African American community. Trump and the Republicans have no credibility or track record in helping any minorities improve their lives.

The safety net of social welfare programs is not what has held back greater economic prosperity in urban communities (which often have higher percentages of African American citizens). Rather, we should look to the role of employers relocating well-paying jobs to the suburbs, historic housing discrimination patterns, underfunded and under-resourced urban schools, and persistent job discrimination.

Dave:"...Republicans have no credibility or track record in helping any minorities improve their lives".

Gosh, I seem to remember a certain Republican, Abe Lincoln, signing the law freeing slaves. I seem to remember African-American baseball legend and civil rights leader Jackie Robinson endorsing a Republican, Nixon, over Kennedy, noting that Republican policies encourage more jobs and self sufficiency opportunities for blacks, while Democrat policies keep them dependent on welfare and handouts.

You blame "employers relocating well paying jobs to the suburbs" for minority unemployment. Really? Forget moving jobs to the suburbs, it is traditional Democratic policies of heavy taxes and regulations on businesses that drives many employers to move their jobs overseas, destroying jobs for all races.

You blame "underfunded urban schools" for high unemployment of minorities. Gosh, why is it that the Republicans favor "school choice and charter schools" to allow minorities in low income inner schools the choice to attend safer and better schools out of their neighborhoods, but Democrats are against school choice and charter schools as it takes money from their top ally, the liberal teacher's union?

Dave, look at Chicago, that the Democrats have controlled for almost 100 years. Their great policies have created the highest murder rate of all time, and fourth generation families of unemployment, despair, and drugs and gangs run the inner cities. Democrat politicians show up every four years in the big inner cities, make promises to get votes, and then nothing changes for the better, as crime, violence, and unemployment continues. If a CEO was running a business the way the Democrats ran the inner cities, they would have been removed by the shareholders decades ago. But as we have seen with the leaked Clinton e-mails, corruption, bribes, and dishonesty keep the Democrats running these failed cities, as the shareholders(the citizens) are kept down by their failed policies.

What is there to lose by allowing the Republicans a chance at running the inner cities? Gosh, they can not do any worse, that is for sure. Give a person a fish and they eat for a night, but teach them to fish and they eat forever.

Posted by DKHSK,
a resident of Bridle Creek,
on Nov 4, 2016 at 8:20 amDKHSK is a registered user.

Dave says:" the Republicans have no credibility or TRACK RECORD in helping any minorities improve their lives."

Emphasis mine.

But the Democrats certainly do have a track record, and it appears a not-insignificant portion of minorities are starting to realize it too, and it is most certainly a TERRIBLE track record, indeed.

Dave also claims that businesses are responsible for the inner city issues and he may be right. But then again, it almost always comes down to prohibitive tax policies that these DEMOCRAT-LEAD cities always institute that cause these businesses to seek other locations in which to operate.

But Dave does not mention this and I have to wonder why?

Its because Dave and others like him put partisanship above the common people. They won't fix the inner city problem because they KNOW if they attempt to bring minorities up the food chain, then those same minorities will start to turn against the and vote differently. It's better to pacify them with welfare checks, food stamps and various other goodies in exchange for their vote then to have minorities be self sufficient, that way they can justify their phony baloney jobs and be able to proclaim to the rest of us how GOOD and CARING they are.

Dave and the Democrats worst fear is that their "plantation" gets smaller, and they lose power.

Thanks for bringing another one of your spot on thought-provoking blogs. I've always been greatly troubled by blacks' self-induced victimization, heavily facilitated by the Democratic Party who asked for nothing but their vote.

Well, you may want to ask yourselves why, unless you don't believe that minority voters have the ability to think for themselves, are the overwhelming majority of minority voters voting for Hillary Clinton and not for the Republican candidate?

Well yes, Dave, minority voters very much think for themselves. They have a grand bargain with the Democratic Party which is, we vote for you and you continue to deliver tax-payer funded government programs. They vote for Hillary because she promises, as did Obama, more free stuff and political support. One doesn't have to do much thinking to figure out who to vote for, and it isn't the republicans. There is that unspoken behemoth called the national debt but as Obama has said all along, 'let's not talk about that'.

"Dave": Latest poll shows that Trump has a 29% lead over Hillary with all military veterans, of all races. Why do you think that is, "Dave"? Why do you think that the majority of Bernie supporters were between the age of 18-22? Gosh, maybe because he promised free college for everyone? Of course, free is a relative term, as someone has to pay for it. Do you think Hillary treating law enforcement like criminals and playing the race card and causing a race war by inflaming relations between the police and blacks for her own political gain had anything to do with this? Remember, good old Bill Clinton said during the primary of 2012 that the only reason Obama was getting support was because he was black. Yes, "Dave", be careful playing the race card, or any card that you think entitles you to immunity from logic and critical thinking analysis.

Tom - You make me laugh. Two points: (1) Republicans may try to run away from it; but, it was Dick Cheney who told us all that the national debt/deficit doesn't matter. (2) More white people get welfare benefits than do black people in this country (you could look it up, as they say)-- so, are they voting for "freebies" from Trump. Your rationale is pretty shallow.

American - There is no evidence of a "race war." Simply scare language on your part. The last I checked, the First Amendment protected legitimate protests -- in this case by citizens (both black and white) objecting to the disproportionate use of lethal force by police against black citizens. It is a problem that should concern any American who truly believes in justice and equal protection of the laws.

"Dave": You made me laugh! A Hillary supporter lecturing us on "justice" and "equal protection of the laws". Where is the "justice" and "equal protection of the laws" when actual veterans go to prison for violating the national security classified material laws, and Hillary lies under oath about it and repeatedly broke the law but yet she is somehow immune from prosecution because her husband appointed AG Loretta Lynch to Federal Prosecutor's Office, and then had an exparte meeting with her on an airplane while Hillary was under investigation? Or Hillary "forgetting" to inform the State Department, as required by law, of the $2,000,000.00 check the Clinton Foundation received from Qatar while she was Secretary of State? Yes, "Dave", you are hilarious! Hillary supporters giving us a lecture on "Justice" and "Equal Protection of the laws" is like Bill Clinton supporters giving us a lecture on marriage fidelity and the evils of adultery.

Posted by DKHSK,
a resident of Bridle Creek,
on Nov 8, 2016 at 9:51 pmDKHSK is a registered user.

Predictions if Trump wins:

1. National media will proclaim that the economy is in terrible shape.
2. Homelessness will be a national problem deserving of war proclamation.
3. The 5 theaters of war that are on-going will suddenly be something that DEMOCRAT protestors will be rallying against.